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With two decades of artistic practice exploring an understanding of the natural world through the medium of computational technologies, boredomresearch have become intimately aware of the sensitivity and vulnerability of complex systems, including those which support human life on earth.
boredomresearch have been expanding their interest in bio-inspired systems in a project Robots in Distress which considers our strategies for coping in a world increasingly destabilised by human activity. In collaboration with the Artificial Life Lab (Karl Franzens University, Graz Austria), who are employing bio-inspired robots to provide solutions operating in human polluted environments, in 2016 boredomresearch started building robots made from the same plastic waste that pollutes many marine environments. Their work with biologists and engineers offers a different perspective which challenges a broader concern over a tendency towards increasingly complex solutions to answer the challenges of environmental crisis. This has led the artists to extend cutting edge research in artificial neural networks augmented by artificial hormone production to create autonomous agents with the potential for despondency. As emotional robotics becomes a reality does it also reveal a vulnerability? As we incorporate the robustness of swarm robotics into our technological armory should we also be mindful that the most archetypal swarm of all, the honey bee, is an organism in crisis. In this presentation boredomresearch foster a new vision for technological innovation, one that recognises the fragility of the environment that sustains it.
